Went to see it last night. Incredibly good and I enjoyed it. Even though it wasn't an action packed film and I worked out the plot when Cruise mets Morgan Freeman, it held my interest all the way through.
One thing that puzzled me was why did Julia (Julie?) Harper have a different name on her incubator box?

I assumed it was due to timing but that's just an assumption. Like perhaps Jack asked her to marry him before the mission so they didn't have time to change anything but she still considered herself Mrs. Harper.

Thanks Wyatt, that makes sense. She called herself Jack's wife so they were obviously already married, but maybe the NATO procedure was to use her maiden name on the box because she would have been signed up with that name?
Either way, it makes more sense now.

Originally Posted by Dillster:Went to see it last night. Incredibly good and I enjoyed it. Even though it wasn't an action packed film and I worked out the plot when Cruise mets Morgan Freeman, it held my interest all the way through.
One thing that puzzled me was why did Julia (Julie?) Harper have a different name on her incubator box?

It's been suggested that the name is different because

[ SPOILER - Click to reveal ]

Spoiler:

having J. Harper on Julia's sleep pod and J. Harper on Jack's sleep pod would have been confusing for the logistics of the mission, on top of which we never see a wedding in the flashback, so my inclination is that the naming convention was driven by NASA primarily, but also by the fact that they weren't officially married... or because they may have gotten married in secret so as to not upset the mission (I don't know of NASA has a policy against married astronauts or not).

How did TET manage an army of Jack Harpers fighting side by side? Helmets!

Seriously, though, I finally saw Oblivion and I loved it. It is true I figured out the puzzle pretty quickly but that didn't bother me at all. The movie was just that damn good. I think some people nitpick too much these days. After being burned by quite a few bad movies, now nothing will pass the test for a lot of people.

I am not saying many of the story problems don't exist, but let's be real. How is the black box in the sleep module if Jack and Vic are recording to it? Well, why did the recording stop as soon as the TET doors close? Maybe because the box was always in the sleep module. That's the part which can be safely ejected it seems. The astronauts didn't die instantly upon entering the TET. We see Tech 49 takes a loooonnnng time to get to the center. They could have recorded another half hour of material.

As far as story problems go, though, it make me wonder if this is an effect of scripts being rewritten too many times, by too many different people over too long a period of time. For example, you hear about this great script that is bought. When the director is attached, he has his favorite guy do a rewrite. Production never takes off, and a year later another studio buys the project. They hire some totally new guy to come in and do a rewrite, and he doesn't all work with, if he even talks to, the original writers. Finally months later, a new director is attached. Now he has to have his favorite guy come in a do a rewrite. It seems that stuff like this happens a lot, and stories seem tighter when one guy writes it all or, if multiple people write, they are all working together in the same room.

Originally Posted by teruchan:How did TET manage an army of Jack Harpers fighting side by side? Helmets!

Seriously, though, I finally saw Oblivion and I loved it. It is true I figured out the puzzle pretty quickly but that didn't bother me at all. The movie was just that damn good. I think some people nitpick too much these days. After being burned by quite a few bad movies, now nothing will pass the test for a lot of people.

I am not saying many of the story problems don't exist, but let's be real. How is the black box in the sleep module if Jack and Vic are recording to it? Well, why did the recording stop as soon as the TET doors close? Maybe because the box was always in the sleep module. That's the part which can be safely ejected it seems. The astronauts didn't die instantly upon entering the TET. We see Tech 49 takes a loooonnnng time to get to the center. They could have recorded another half hour of material.

As far as story problems go, though, it make me wonder if this is an effect of scripts being rewritten too many times, by too many different people over too long a period of time. For example, you hear about this great script that is bought. When the director is attached, he has his favorite guy do a rewrite. Production never takes off, and a year later another studio buys the project. They hire some totally new guy to come in and do a rewrite, and he doesn't all work with, if he even talks to, the original writers. Finally months later, a new director is attached. Now he has to have his favorite guy come in a do a rewrite. It seems that stuff like this happens a lot, and stories seem tighter when one guy writes it all or, if multiple people write, they are all working together in the same room.

From experience, it's sometimes a case of "plug one hole by unplugging another" and because at each stage, Printed Script, Rough Storyboard, Animatic... at each stage there is a different vulnerability... Particularly in Print you can't always SEE what might be inconsistent.

Plotwise, that risk also occurs early on but sometimes is caused by trying to fix it. If you try to cover everything, eventually you might end up with something that becomes an inconsistency. You end up with those one or two things that probably will come out stupid or "wordy" if covered, and become possibly inconsistent if left alone.

For example, the infamous "Flight Recorder Gaffe" actually would be covered if Jack says something like: "Flight Recorder Wireless is On." or a display shows that Wireless is on after the Ejection sequence... or during the ejection sequence... but maybe they just felt it would sound nerdy and it would actually affect the edit quite a bit.... So it got left alone, since maybe if they just "insist visually" that this recorder-from-the-future works when sections of the craft are ejected people will just accept that.

Sometimes you're working backwards... How would Jack learn about this or that? The flight recorder! We need the flight recorder.. So it needs to be at the crash site. And that could be the start of a new problem.

Other times, scripts play tricks with your mind. Sometimes you can't SEE something is inconsistent until it is images. That's still what I think happened when the distance between TET and the Sleeping Pods was unclear. In print in the script it can say: "Sleeping Pod Section ejected into Space while Jack and Vika continue to travel to TET".... It may never have described how far it was. And then after you do the blocking and the visuals, and TET is designed to be the size of the Moon or something, it suddenly appears like it's only 5 meters away.

Then TET looks silly for ignoring the "rest of the ship".

But that could be because of how huge TET was in design (another thing that won't always be apparent in print). Or maybe there is some limitation by which TET should not be able to notice the Sleeping Pods... But to add that in is to make the dialogue more jargon-filled than it already is. By the time you probably see something like that... it's too late.

Then why not just allow events to occur naturally in 100% consistency? Cause that's not entertaining. What's entertaining usually is the "timed release" of realizations.. and that means really forcing certain things to happen at a certain time. And that causes a number of problems in many films. But the goal usually is to "make a point"... you want to "say" something so you need all these contrivances.

P.S.: I still liked Oblivion.... but I came out feeling like it needed "a couple of more Writer Passes" for fixes.

P.P.S.: It is also worthy of note that for something so big, Oblivion deliberately kept its scale small. So a LOT of "setup" that would normally occur in other sci-fi where you have MANY characters and extra data/information there in the background to help plug many things (including new flight recorder technology that works while detached) do not occur. To wit, we never even see from what fleet/ship/space station Jack Harper and Vika came from when they were abducted (Maybe a few interior shots of the commander TET impersonates later but that's it), nor do we ever see the Jack Harper Invasion that supposedly took place years prior or how the Jack "Repair Man" ruse is set up. So in that way, the whole story tries to tell a large scale tale but with very few characters and setup help.

Contrast this, for example, with the scale and extra characters "The Matrix" uses to set things up and you'll see what I mean. Things are more elegant if you have "explanations to go around". If you deliberately limit your script to only very few principal characters, you can end up being unable to cover more than you should.

__________________
"Your most creative work is pre-production, once the film is in production, demands on time force you to produce rather than create."My ArtStation

Even though I pretty much hated the film, the design of the sets and hardware were interesting. What blows it for me is that the beautiful designs had nothing to say in the film. They don't contribute in any way except to be picturesque. I can totally imagine the director and AD jumping up and high-fiving each other as they thought up more & more outrageous ideas that have no basis in practicality. "Yeah, and they'll live in a cool, modern house in the sky like the Jetsons!"

I'm not saying stuff like this has to be 100% scientifically accurate. It just has to be relevant to the story and fit in the world that's presented. In Star Wars, you don't question how or what a light saber is - it's explained in one line by Obi Wan - and that's all we need to buy into it. Luke's only slightly wondrous reaction to being given one tells us that he (at the time) sees it as little more than an outdated curiosity.

kind of late to the party, but the flight recorder recording any and all incoming radio signals is a mundane reality, just another channel in a world where advanced signal intercept systems monitor and record ...I really don't know off the top of my head, but I do know that hundreds would be paltry.

A nasa interplanetary segmented system, in the nightmare section detachment scenario,
would have robust back and forth telemetry/ multiple voice channels, and anything else transmittable that hundreds of really smart folks could come up with. This would go to all components, and be recorded, to maximize options and intelligence to all parties, like in Apollo 13 when they went into one thing while there was a problem with the other.

Engage voice recorder would not have been remotely plausible.

The Tet had a tractor beam thing, which I buy as being related to the drone method of flight (besides their blue thruster jet). It isn't invisible, or all black, so I guess they can't tractor the RF signals...ok...inside the tet, deep space radiation shielded cosmos spanning thing that it was, radio silence. simple. smart.

Obviously, an interstellar race could hit the moon like that. Morgan Freeman's assertion that most people just starved is the most plausible alien invasion scenario ever, hands down.

Using the dominant species against itself, of course! Efficient. If you read the Singularity book which is predicting our ability to hack our own minds(a bit too optimistically in my opinion); holding them and hijacking their brains to tell the truth...I would like a gun like this, I would like a pilotable ship like this, I would like an apartment like this...just the barebones stuff that the Tet fulfills with its own design abilities; so cool. Obviously Tech 49 has Jack's tactical knowledge, plus the drone repair skills, BUT the original Jack had to have intellectually conveyed the not so obvious notion that a Jack Harper intended for combat support activities would want to know Morse code.

I imagine they kept the two originals alive a long time. In my imaginary expanded version, they are still alive. Maybe they had a council of hacked simulated Jack and Victoria minds blindly develop the effective team strategy...so cool.

It seemed plausible that the Tet did value Jack's wishes to be a more effective team with Julia...I guess that could be a story flaw, that such an effective, efficient machine would open itself up to the wishes of its worker bee. I've convinced myself, in my expanded version, that we are the Tet's favored, most effective hydrophyllic dominant species that they have encountered in 1000s of worlds, beyond the capabilities of the race that made them.

The best part of the idea that we could be manipulated like that is when Victoria gets sassy with Sally as if she isn't doing a good enough job (destroying our planet)...genius.

That movie easily went into my top 10 I think. I think it was some of the smartest Sci fi ever.

Originally Posted by Stankluv:kind of late to the party, but the flight recorder recording any and all incoming radio signals is a mundane reality, just another channel in a world where advanced signal intercept systems monitor and record ...I really don't know off the top of my head, but I do know that hundreds would be paltry.

Actually I don't care how the flight recorder works, like I mentioned, all they had to do was "cover" it.... a simple half-second or so showing the thing was still recording AFTER the detachment....Or a mention from a character that it would still be working... Basically something to stress that "In THIS reality.. it's still working... nothing unusual because IT'S THE FUTURE."

It's a gaffe because it got left open to interpretation.

An example of "cover" occurs in Dredd (2012) when Dredd and Anderson talk about why Anderson isn't wearing her helmet. You do it so you can fill the gap.

They didn't do that. Is it a big problem? No. Just saying they could have covered it with an insert.

__________________
"Your most creative work is pre-production, once the film is in production, demands on time force you to produce rather than create."My ArtStation

I just saw this, and considering that I've suffered through SKYFALL and INTODARKNESS and PROMETHEUS in the last 15 months, I didn't think this could be anywhere near as bad.

I was wrong. Except for the sky projection work, there is nothing in this movie that was worth my time. I've already made the joke about Tom Hanks and his vollyeball having more chemistry than Cruise and the Quantum chick, but hey, IT'S TRUE!

This was like one endless bad videogame. Except for laughing at the movie a few times, we got nothing out of it at all. Usually these things have the saving grace of art direction (EVENT HORIZON is one of those), but some of that is suspect here too - Cruise's gun looks like a worse version of a TNG phaser rifle (and considering how badly THOSE suck, that's really saying something.)

If I hadn't gotten it free by using a code at redbox, I'd be a lot more angry. Also, if I hadn't seen PHANTOM this week, which is a REAL movie, and a good one, I'd be down in the dumps. I think I''ll call this astonishingly bad, which is how I characterized PROMETHEUS.

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"achievement is its own reward -- pride obscures it."

I am not a Cruise fan and didn't expect much from the film but I really liked it. I liked the puzzle and the deigns were wonderful in all their sterile splendor. I am pretty sure the message was : we aren't real and we don't care as opposed to the old shack and warehouse surroundings. Beautiful artificiality, quite nicely done. I expect the future to look like Italian modern anyhow so this fit right in.

Given the, for all intents and purposes, indie history of Oblivion, I think it is unfair to compare it to the legacy filling Prometheus and the in-cohesiveness of that movie. If anything, I think the story of Oblivion getting made is as close to a Hollywood Cinderella story about a wide distribution sci-fi project we are likely to see for a while.

While Prometheus has inspired some funny Honest Trailer vids, I am looking for such a video to illuminate the laughs I am missing in Oblivion.

"Suffering" through the new Star Trek?....oh well, I thought it was fun, I never really liked any of the old stuff much. I imagine you didn't like the first JJ Trek?...do yourself a favor and don't see the next one I guess? Me and a lot of other people really liked it and I think the future of Trek will be more to our tastes than for the people that liked the old stuff.

Skyfall was ...meh, but I really liked Pierce Brosnan and I like my Bond funnier (Roger Moore)

I really can't relate to the sky projection stuff being worth your time if everything else was so bad...it didn't do anything better or cheaper than basic TV vfx digital back lot techniques, kind of just fun to know from a professional experience perspective, I guess?

Russian Subs...hmmm..maybe. I watched the Hunt for Red October within the last year...

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